It seems Ed Miliband is banking on a promised cut in university tuition fees to secure electoral success. Before we indulge in dewy-eyed nostalgia for the days before student loans, it's incumbent upon those who care about what happens in our universities to question the motives of the party that first introduced tuition fees, raised them to over £3000 per year, and commissioned the Browne Review that recommended the current £9000 annual fee.

An intellectual void

There's a black hole at the heart of English higher education and it's not where the 45% of currently written-off loans disappear to. It's an intellectual void evident in the interminable debates over funding that take place in the absence of any discussion as to the purpose of a university, what it means to be a student, and what a degree today represents. The advent of the student as consumer took place long before tuition fees reached their current peak, and the process cannot be reversed by the very people who introduced it.

Factors other than tuition fees contribute to students acting as customers purchasing a product. Successive governments, following the recommendation of the 1997 Dearing Report, have encouraged students to see themselves as investors in receipt of a service and to seek "value for money and a good return from the investment". This has led to an instrumental sense that a degree is a financial transaction: students expect a guaranteed return in the post-graduation labour market. The focus of education is upon securing a certificate that can most readily be cashed-in.

No room for risk-taking

There is little encouragement for students to demonstrate interest in a particular subject, still less to take intellectual risks; indeed this may prove a dangerous strategy and threaten the security of the investment. This attitude turns higher education into job training; taking delight in potentially transformative new knowledge is replaced by ticking off demonstrable employability skills. Yet the Labour party's latest proposals, which include suggestions that employers be encouraged to sponsor university places and that students should have the option of two-year intensive degrees, will only exacerbate these trends.

Satisfaction does not equal quality

When the purpose of going to university is linked so closely to the future world of work, for many students the most immediate aim is satisfaction in the "student experience". This focus on satisfaction is driven, from government down, through the relentless soliciting of the student voice and the push upon lecturers to respond to students' demands.

Back in 2010 Lord Browne proposed that student choice, often based upon crude measures of satisfaction, should be a key driver of the market in university places. However, there's nothing to suggest satisfaction says anything much about the quality of education, especially if quality is judged in terms of intellectual challenge. Indeed, the opposite may be the case; research from the US suggests students and lecturers may enter into a "disengagement pact" in which lecturers expect little effort and give good grades in return for students reporting high levels of satisfaction.

The coalition government's 2011 white paper, Students at the heart of the system, reinforced the narcissistic assumption that for students, university is all about them: they should feel satisfied, they should be able to dictate the terms of their education and they should expect a good job in return. Increasingly lecturers tend to interpret course content as also being all about the student: their experiences presented back to them, in a form that is relevant to them, to enhance their life projects. If university really is just a personal indulgence, then I struggle to find one good reason why anyone other than students themselves should pay for it.

Students deserve better

If Miliband really wants to be radical he needs to do more than a little creative accounting. Students deserve better; they've shown they are neither put off higher education by tuition fees nor swayed by price. Miliband could inspire students by arguing for a rigorously academic knowledge-based curriculum which offers intellectual challenge, stimulates interest and take students places they never dreamed possible. A focus on knowledge transcends the self and opens the mind to new ideas. This might not be immediately satisfying or lead directly into employment. But it might just be worth voting for.

Joanna Williams is a senior lecturer in higher education and academic practice at the University of Kent and author of Consuming higher education: why learning can't be bought – follow her on Twitter @jowilliams293.

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